100 Wanning Sun
In the past few years, especially since the frequent appearance of smog in many
Chinese cities since January 2013, the harm and risk posed by environmental problems
are no longer local issues concerning a hitherto unheard of river or preventing a
remote endangered species from extinction. Today, environmental risk has become
much more national in scale, more in-your-face in nature, and takes the form of
widespread public risk, to which everyone is vulnerable. When Chinese journalist
Chai Jing posted her 2-hour documentary Under the Dome online in March 2015, it
drew hundreds of millions of viewers (Yuan 2015). So, if the public has become more
conscious than ever of the environmental risk they are living with, has this increased
awareness translated into a higher level of green activism and more rigorous public
debates on environmental issues? Is the “critical reflective outlook” of environmental
reporting enhanced by the recent exacerbation of China’s environmental problems?
Set in the three related contexts of the state news media, lifestyle television
programs, and the realm of consumer behavior and the market, this chapter
addresses these questions by examining how environmentalism intersects with
politics at a number of levels. It first considers the politics of the party-state, and
examines how political constraints result in the government’s playing a role that
is at best ineffectual and at worst censorious. This is followed by a discussion of
how environmental issues are dealt with in the space of lifestyle consumer advice,
a media genre that is responsive to both political sensitivity and the regime of
ratings in the media industry. This is by implication an analysis of the cultural
politics of representation, aiming to identify major ways in which certain forms
of lifestyle politics are endorsed, encouraged and cast as desirable. The last part
outlines the political-economic factors underpinning the commodification of the
concept of “green” in a competitive consumer market.
State media and the party-state
Despite its serious environmental problems, China has in fact impressed the world
with a number of environmental achievements. In recent years, its government
has published a series of policies and plans aimed at addressing environmental
problems, including, among many, a plan to cut carbon emissions, reduce the
production of cement and steel, invest in cleaner and more sustainable energy,
and treat contaminated waterways and farmlands (Martina et al. 2014). Intentions
and objectives, however, are one thing; political will and the administrative
capacity to enforce these policies quite another. While state media are tireless
when it comes to announcing green government policies and plans, they are
often shy of explicitly saying how effective these measures are, given that the
central government is up against big polluting industries and growth-driven local
governments. For instance, reducing China’s over-dependence on coal as the
staple source of energy has been on the government’s agenda for more than a
decade, but instead of seeing a lowered coal consumption, the share of coal in the
nation’s energy mix has risen from 68 to 72 per cent (Chen 2014).
As the most important actor in shaping the past, present, and future of China’s
environment, the Chinese government has an indispensable role in the formation